A Tarot blog by Angelo Nasios author of the forth coming book "What The Little White Book Won't Tell you"

Saturday, January 27, 2007

Commentary- Penn and Teller Bullshit! : NEW AGE

This entry to my Blog comes from a post from another website I found on my Favorite Tarot Blog 78 Notes to self: a Tarot Journal By Ginny Hunt It is called The Tarot Channel. In their section of Television They posted a Video from the Showtime TV show Penn & Teller: Bullshit! The bases of this show is to debunk & show the truth to “Myths” or other things a skeptic would be skeptical about. The Episode I watched dealt with new age Topics such as Yoga, Herbs, Crystals and yes Tarot. I will be expressing my view about the Tarot segment of the show.

Penn and Teller try to “debunk” Tarot readings to prove that it’s all a scam and it’s really done by Cold Readings. For their experiment they picked three different readers to be on the show, each three thought they were the only one that would be on, and hired a man named Jim and sent him to each reader to test the readings, but here is the twist Jim would be acting as a different person for each reading. The first persona he took on was an unemployed bum with tequila breath. The second persona was of an over stressed over worked business man and last he took the persona of the hard working family man.

Now on to the first reader and first persona “Unemployed bum” The deck that was used was a regular Rider Waite deck, the cards 3 of Swords Reversed and the 4 of Pentacles. Now the reader said that this is talking about work and that is environment is unable to support himself regarding work that he needs to get the resumes out. Now I don’t know where he is getting this from cause I don’t See unemployment in these 2 cards. But that the 3 of swords reversed could be saying that pain is fading away and the dark skies will be leaving to reveal more positive future, with the 4 of Pentacles would indicate something with work or money on the security side of it. So the reader was right on that in some way. So these cards would say that troubles concerning money should be resolved. So I think the reader was right, but I think he did use the appearance of Jim to assist him with the reading and there is nothing wrong with that. Ok I give the reader some credit but I am not impressed.

Reading number two, the over stressed business man. This time Jim dressed in a nice suit and looks real slick. Before the reading he was on his cell and was “talking” to someone from works and threatens to fire them. He comes in for the reading where the reader has what looks to be the Osho Zen Tarot Deck. She uses the Celtic cross spread I believe. I am unfamiliar with this deck so it is hard for me to interpret the cards to verify her reading. She tells “Business Jim” That he works to hard and he is over stressed. She was right according to his persona but she may have been influenced by the "Phone call" before.

The last but not least “The Hard working Family Man” this time Jim is on his cell “Talking” to his wife and says he will take her out to dinner cause she cooks enough, Oh how sweet I bet the reader heard him on his phone just like that last one, would you look at that! This reader uses the Rider Waite deck so that’s good for me. She pulls the 10 of cups and says he is very happy in love and marriage. This is true because this card means Happiness in marriage. The reader was right. But wait this is just a persona that Jim is acting so she is wrong, right? NO.

2 of the 3 readings came to be true for each persona that Jim took on. Why is this? It’s not because it was a “Cold Reading” but because Jim was Acting in the persona of another person and took on the qualities of that type of person and life, so while he was shuffling the cards he was thinking and acting as another person and that’s why the readings came up so true, because the reading was for the persona that Jim was acting as.

Now I am not saying that all readers are real, you must be careful when picking a reader, some are cold readers and they will try and get as much money as they can from you. To get tips from me on picking a reader read my post on that subject.